The Insider Threat

by Brad Taylor

  “Or he hid it well, playing you much better than you played him. Did you hear what was said before he started carving?”

  “Yes.”

  The secretary of defense said, “I didn’t catch it. What was it?”

  Kurt pulled out a transcript from a folder and said, “The man known as LEOPARD appears to hesitate, and the man on the right says, “For the White House. Do it for the White House.”

  Kerry said nothing, knowing the evidence was damning. President Warren said, “Is he the leak? The reason that BOBCAT was exposed?”

  “No. The two were completely separate. LEOPARD had no knowledge of BOBCAT. None.”

  “Well, with that statement, we have to assume he’s doing the killing because of the US government. And so is the man who spoke on the right. Any idea about him?”

  Kurt said, “All we know is he’s Caucasian. He’s not an Arab.”

  Billings said, “And that he hates the United States. Great. The CIA just trained a terrorist to come back home and blow up the White House.”

  Kerry said, “LEOPARD won’t get one foot into the United States. As soon as I leave here, his passport information will be out to every government in the region.”

  President Warren said, “Okay, okay, this isn’t Taskforce business. We’ll deal with the fallout later. Kerry, get ready for a blistering from the intelligence committees.”

  Easton Beau Clute, the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said, “Yeah. I’ll do what I can, but it’s not going to be pretty.”

  President Warren said, “Continue, Kurt. You were saying something about ISIS oil?”

  “Yes, sir. We have enough evidence on Panda to convince anyone in the royal family that he’s doing things antithetical to their interests. We pass it to the Saudis and he’s a goner. Unfortunately, Panda wasn’t just a financial facilitator. He was in Nairobi coordinating for actual expertise. Manpower for ISIS in the form of technical experts in the oil industry.”

  “He was smuggling men?”

  “Yes. ISIS has captured several oil fields in both Syria and Iraq, but they don’t have the expertise to make them operate at full capacity, so they’re losing money. They already sell the oil at a steep discount on the black market, and they need the income to maintain their hold on the terrain.”

  “So we stopped that as well?”

  “Yes and no. We have a name on the far end. A guy in ISIS called Adnan al-Tayyib. We think he’s some finance minister and the man coordinating for the technical skill. Panda’s going to be gone, but not soon enough. He’s arranged for the passage of five Nigerian Muslims who worked the oil fields near Lagos. They’re set to travel in three days, and the Saudis won’t do anything to Panda until he returns to the kingdom. They aren’t going to arrest him in Kenya. Which means the men are going to make it into Syria.”

  “So what do you recommend?”

  “Take them off the board. All five. We can’t remove Panda because of the repercussions it will cause, but these guys are nobodies.”

  “How can you do that? We’ve never executed a problem set that large.”

  “Pike’s working the issue now. All he needs is the authority.”

  11

  Jacob heard Ringo’s familiar voice and thought, Great. They had to bring that asshole here as well?

  “Looky here. The little Lost Boys. They must need you to carry my luggage on this mission.”

  Hussein gave a weak smile. Carlos and Devon hooted, as if it were the funniest joke in the world, not even understanding that they were the butt of it. Jacob said nothing.

  Ringo sidled up to Jacob and said, “Do you really think they’re going to use a ‘Jacob’ on this mission? This is the Islamic State. The caliphate.”

  Jacob bit back his words, remembering the warning the Chechen had given. Not so much the words, but the way they were delivered. Omar was not a man to trifle with. Unlike Ringo.

  But not here. Not now.

  After the killing of the snitches, the Lost Boys had been pulled out and loaded on a truck, Ringo laughing at their fate. They’d driven for hours in a convoy of four trucks, out of Raqqa and into the desert. Jacob knew they were heading east. Toward Iraq.

  They’d passed the town of al-Mayadin and had veered south, the rest of the convoy heading to al-Qa’im and the Iraq border.

  Now on their own, the dust and wind growing tiresome in the bed of the Toyota HiLux, Jacob had recognized the terrain. They were going back to the training camp where they’d learned to fight. Where they’d also had to prove their fealty to the Islamic State. He questioned if it was more punishment or more training. They still had their weapons, so he was hopeful it was the latter.

  He saw Hussein trembling against the cab, and began to wonder about the man. On some makeshift parole for good behavior, Hussein had been freed from the school and the punishment of the white house, and had—according to him—traveled to Syria, then spent six weeks in the embrace of the Islamic State. When he’d come home, he’d visited Jacob, Devon, and Carlos, still inside. He’d told wonderful stories about Syria and life in the Islamic State. He’d begged them to return with him, and looking back, Jacob wondered if he just didn’t want to go alone. If he had been afraid to go alone.

  Jacob had listened, and had liked the idea. After Hussein’s visit, he’d researched the Islamic State, and seen what they were. Carlos and Devon had begun watching YouTube videos, consumed by the violence and the absolute law of the sword. In short order they’d converted to Islam, reading everything they found on jihadist websites, falling headlong into the siren call of the biggest gang on the planet. Forget about the Crips and Bloods. The Islamic State was taking the concept and making it span the globe. And they were doing it for a greater purpose than just money or drugs.

  The kicker for Jacob had been the total control over his own destiny. He knew life would be brutal, and possibly short, but it would be his choice. No more dealing with authority. No more trips to the white house. When he died it would be on his terms, for a cause. Not for some sadistic guard’s pleasure.

  Jacob had faked the interest in Islam well enough, and all three decided to make the trek. They’d set a plan in motion for escape.

  The reform school was, at its base, a prison, but it was privately run by a supposedly Christian institution, and as such, it fell outside of any federal oversight. A contract money mill that served the state as a dumping ground for malcontents who weren’t worthy of flooding the real prison system, it wasn’t very secure. Fear of the guards kept everyone in line, the white brick building in the center of the courtyard a daily reminder of the beatings and molestation administered for any breach of protocol.

  When that fear ceased to exist, though, it was easy enough to escape. Especially if, like Jacob, you were willing to kill to do so. He only wished the hated captain of the guards was on duty the night they had fled. He would have enjoyed beating him to death with the pipe-legs he’d pulled from the dormitory bunk bed. As it was, he had to settle for a lesser guard. One who’d been somewhat kind, and had never taken him to the white house.

  As he slammed the pipe into his head over and over, the skull splitting open and the brain matter staining the concrete floor, he reflected on how the smallest bit of scheduling had defined the guard’s fate. And the fact that the guard had done nothing to stop the others from using the white house.

  They’d fled into the woods and met Hussein, waiting with a pickup. He’d taken them to an abandoned hovel in the slums of Miami, and they’d waited for the door to be kicked in. It had not. The closest thing had been their names and faces spread across the news for a day and a half. After that, they were forgotten, at least by the slavering twenty-four-hour cable channels.

  Even so, they lived like hermits, not daring to venture out except for the one risk they needed to attempt to leave: applying for passports. A scary prospect, they’d ventured to three separate post offices and made the applications, the bored postal employees dutifully
taking their information for a trip to the Cayman Islands.

  They’d lived in the dark, eating junk food delivered by Hussein, for four weeks. Miraculously, the passports had arrived without the police delivering them in a SWAT van, and they’d purchased tickets to Turkey, fleeing with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

  Hussein had said that IS was paying for the flights, and Jacob had believed him, but now, due to Hussein’s behavior, he was having doubts. The three of them from the school had flown together, connecting through JFK in New York. Hussein had flown separately, going through Dulles airport in Washington, DC. He’d stated at the time that he’d already purchased his ticket, and it seemed to make sense, as they linked up just fine in Istanbul, but watching Hussein tremble gave Jacob questions.

  He said, “Hussein, you all right?”

  “Yes. Just tired.”

  “Tired? Or scared?”

  Hussein huddled against the wind and said, “A little of both.”

  “Why is it different to you now? Syria seems exactly what the news reports said it would be. What’s changed from when you were here before?”

  Hussein said, “Nothing. I don’t know.”

  “Did you come here before? Did you really travel here?”

  Hussein’s eyes slid to the desert for a moment, then came back. He started to say something, then thought better of it. He said, “Yes, of course. How do you think I got the money to pay your way here?”

  “Hussein, I don’t know, but we’re tighter than the Islamic State. We lived through the white house. There is nothing stronger than our brotherhood.”

  Hussein said, “The Islamic State sent me. That’s what happened.”

  Jacob said, “Okay. Okay. But if you want to run, I’ll help you. We’ll stay.”

  Jacob glanced at the pair in the back of the pickup, the wind preventing them from hearing. He said, “Carlos and Devon have found a home. A reason to exist. And so have I, but I haven’t forgotten what you did for me inside.”

  Hussein said, “I can’t run. I wouldn’t make it back to Turkey. Have you seen what they do to anyone who turns their back on them? They’ll torture me. Kill me.”

  Jacob looked out at the setting sun, the red rays scorching the desert sand. He said, “We’re all going to die sometime. Better to do it on our feet.”

  Hussein put his head into his hands and began to weep.

  12

  They’d continued on the dirt road, seemingly driving straight into the desert, until Jacob could see the training camp in the distance. A collection of tents and crumbling buildings, it was some type of abandoned industrial facility. Maybe for oil. Maybe for something else. It reminded Jacob of a scene out of The Road Warrior. Whatever it was, the compound provided the necessary infrastructure to house up to two hundred men, and ample buildings to learn the art of urban fighting.

  The lone HiLux drove straight through the center, Jacob seeing armed men dressed in black scurrying about and hearing shouted commands filling the air. But the triumphant black flags of the Islamic State were nowhere to be found. When Jacob had first arrived on the battlefield, it was all the rage to wave them about for Internet videos and pure intimidation. Now they were hidden. An indication of the fear the leadership felt from American surveillance, and the devastating air strikes that followed.

  None of the men gave them a second glance. They drove past the collection of tents used as a barracks to house the fighters, an area that Jacob knew well, and continued on to a two-story concrete building on the outskirts of the compound. A much more hospitable residence than the tents, it was where the instructors stayed. And where the Lost Boys’ motivation had been tested.

  Jacob tightened his grip on his AK-47, feeling his pulse increase. The driver, a thin Arab with a sharp nose and a spotty, mangelike beard, stopped the truck and waved them forward.

  They jumped out of the back, following him single file inside the building. They were led to the second floor, walking down a hallway of broken brick and buckled windows. The Arab stopped outside the one room with a functioning door and knocked. Something was shouted in Arabic, and he opened it.

  Jacob saw a dilapidated couch, two metal chairs, and a desk. Behind it was an imposing man with a ginger beard and a face made of cracked granite. Creases like veins running through stone and faded blue eyes that had seen more than enough to eradicate any notion of mercy.

  He said, “I am Omar al-Khatami.”

  Jacob heard the name and wondered what was going on. Omar had been his upper-echelon commander in the fight for Mosul. A Chechen with a myth of invincibility surrounding him like a black shroud because of his battlefield prowess and his unrelenting cruelty. Something learned long before the Islamic State, in the bloodbath known as Grozny.

  “Take a seat. We have some things to discuss.”

  The Lost Boys looked at one another for support and he barked, “Sit down. Now.”

  They did so without further encouragement, cramming themselves into the broken couch.

  He went face-to-face, searing them with the absolute power he held over their fate. He settled on Jacob last.

  “Jacob, yes?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You came to us from the United States, swearing bay’ah to the caliphate. To the Islamic State, yet you still bear the name of the infidel. Why?”

  Jacob saw the heat coming from the Chechen’s eyes, and met it with his own. “That’s the name I was given at birth. It’s my identity. It is who I am.”

  “Most, when they embrace the true path, also embrace Allah. Dropping the false trappings of the hedonistic West. Yet you do not. It causes questions.”

  Jacob felt the fear drop away, his soul moving again into the netherworld, just as it had when he’d sliced the traitor’s neck. And every time he had crossed the threshold of the white house. He retreated to a numb place where pain existed but didn’t control him.

  He looked the Chechen in the eye and said, “My commitment isn’t held in my name. It’s held in my actions.”

  He waited on the outburst. Waited to be led to the Islamic State version of the white house. He was surprised.

  Omar glared at him for a brief pause, then laughed and said, “Yes, yes, I guess that’s true. You were a lion in Mosul. Can you be such a lion when there are no bullets shooting at you? Can you show the same commitment?”

  Jacob said, “Of course. Just tell us what you want. We’ll execute.”

  “What I want is for you to martyr yourself.”

  The words hung in the air, Hussein hearing them and beginning to hitch his breathing, Carlos and Devon entranced, wide eyes staring at the Chechen.

  “Can you do that? Or is your name an indication of your commitment?”

  “My commitment was shown in the creation of the caliphate. In the fight for Mosul.”

  He maintained his eye contact with the Chechen, no longer caring about his fate, and said, “There was only one Iraqi army unit in Mosul that fought. While the other Iraqis ran away, and the Islamic State claimed victory, I ensured that success. I killed them all.”

  The Islamic State succeeded by terrorizing its enemies, using brutality to beat them into submission before a fight, which is exactly what happened in Mosul when the Iraqi army fled. All but one element. They apparently didn’t get the word that their buddies were running through fields in half-dressed civilian clothes and getting gunned down by giddy Islamic State fighters driving in SUVs.

  So they fought.

  Jacob and the other Lost Boys were merely cannon fodder in the battle, as his element was composed of new recruits, and had no real martial skill. When their leader had been killed, the discipline broke down and the recruits began to retreat. Jacob had rallied them, fighting like a demon, and had actually routed the Iraqi element force on force, using will alone.

  Afterward, he’d mopped up the survivors, shooting them in the back as they lay in a ditch pretending to be dead, or running down dark alleys, camouflaged pants under has
tily stolen civilian shirts.

  Omar considered his words and said, “Yes. I have heard.” He stood up. “I’ve done the same thing in Dagestan, fighting the Russians. It gives me a soft spot for you, but I promise, it will disappear at the slightest indication you or your men are considering leaving. You’re in it now. Forever.”

  Jacob nodded and said, “Remember, we volunteered to come here. We have nowhere to go now. The Islamic State is our home.”

  “You’ll be leaving your home soon. Going back to the West, where you’ll conduct an attack that will leave you etched into the history of the caliphate.”

  “What is the target?”

  “All in good time. You have some shahid training first, along with other selected instructions. First, some rules. One: Never, ever use any social media. Stay out of pictures being taken, and never tell anyone here you are on a mission. Nobody is to know. Two: There will be others arriving. They are on a mission as well, but they know nothing of yours. Do not let them know you are doing something different. Let them believe you are with them.”

  The Lost Boys nodded and Omar said, “Fine. Get settled. You stay here, with the leadership. Your instruction will begin tomorrow.”

  * * *

  They’d awoken the following morning, conducting prayers and wondering when they’d start learning the art of the suicide bomber, when Ringo had shown up with a band of about twenty men. All of Arabic descent, some from the West, like Ringo, but most from countries in the Gulf States, they filtered past bringing in their makeshift luggage and weapons. The same man who had driven the Lost Boys directed them to their rooms.

  Jacob watched them disappear. Jordanians, Tunisians, Algerians, and others, all younger than twenty-five. By this time, he’d learned to distinguish nationality by dress.